Flint 3

The third tale of Jack Flint, title to follow (when I think of one)

It was my first time getting shot and it was just as bad as I had imagined.

The doctors told me later on that I was lucky he was using an old service-pistol with the right kind of slug, because they said hollow-points make a bigger mess, but all I knew at the time was that it smarted like a b***h and made a big hole in my arm.

As if that wasn't bad enough, I was looking at a repeat performance in the near future, so I started shooting right back at him. I got the guy next to him, but that was close enough to spook him.

Having established that we were both armed, we each found something heavy to dive behind and the a*s-hole found his voice.

"Hey Flint, I think you must'a hurt yourself on my bullet."

I wanted to return the favour, but something told me I should probably see to the hole first. If nothing else, blood-stains are hard to wash out of a good shirt. I looked down, but it was no good; the shirt was a lost cause. Once I'd accepted that, I got to making the hole big enough so I could pull the whole sleeve off. Its life as a white shirt was over, but my wardrobe suddenly had an opening for a bandage and I always thought that even the hopeless deserved a second chance. Must have been a sense of kinship I was feeling. That or I was just getting light-headed from the pain and the blood.

"Forget about it, it's nothing really. Just a scratch..."

"Well, if you want, I can take a look."

A*s-hole...

It occurred to me that his voice seemed a little clearer, so I leant out to one side and saw he'd poked his head out to heckle. I would have been upset, but it just made it easier to give him a little lead of my own. This one took off part of his ear, they think. I mean, it's all just scraped together from the available evidence, but it all fits.

In any case, he got his head down and started cursing a blue streak. Pretty sure I know what comes next, I pulled my own head out of the firing line and not before time; his last remaining lackey put a bullet in the wall behind me that I am sure was meant for me.

"You're dead, Flint! You hear me? Dead!"

After his smart-a*s remarks, the sound was music to my ears. Okay, a dangerous man had just said he would kill me, but that's almost validation in my line of work. I'm a PI, in case I forgot to mention that. I'm not used to getting shot, no matter what that hack Chandler has to say about the profession. Mostly, it's a quiet job where I interview witnesses that some attorney is too important to speak to or confirm statements for insurance companies, but my ex-wie had helped raise me to the big leagues a couple of months back.

Right now, I was not rating my chances of getting out alive, but some part of me was living the dream. I was getting shot at, so I must be doing it right at last. Only... Nobody was shooting...

There are some things you expect from a small-time gangster, like bullets and threats, and then there are those moments which catch you by surprise. This was the second kind of moment.

Over the top of the barricade I was starting to work out was a planter of some kind, complete with plants, came a large egg-shaped chunk of metal. I'd picked it up before I really worked out what it was and already tossed it back over when the word 'grenade' found its way into my brain. I pressed myself against the clay pot and waited for the explosion.

If I had failed to realise how much getting shot would hurt, that was nothing to being in the same room as a grenade. One moment I was waiting for a bang and the next... Well, I woke up thinking I was in the middle of a three-bells hangover.

The thug was probably the red smear against one wall, having taken one for his boss. His boss was just lying there with the dumbest expression on his face as I slapped a pair of cuffs on him and waited for the boys in blue.

Not a bad end to the case, even if I could barely stand up, but at least I caught the a*s-hole...